Hi Folks
One of the aspects that India Program constantly works on is that the the work that your team does for and with our community is based on clear objectives, robust design and relevant progress parameters.
India Program has / is / will be undertaking a series of pilots. Pilots by nature indicate that we try innovative things out sometimes, and we may or may not always suceed. We must be bold and try them out - but we must also carefully build these pilots out and measure progress. On the main India Program meta page, I've created a tab that links to a new sub-page called Pilot Designs - where I have published 3 of these pilot designs. More will follow as they are ready, or as we undertake new work, so do add the page to your watchlists.
Basic Community Building is the work that Shiju is doing with small Indic communities - in this case, Assamese. It will show what steps can be taken to build such communities - from communication to collaboration to outreach. This work is especially relevant to small Indic communities - but there are pointers even for larger communities (including English.)
Story-telling for Community Building is the work that Noopur just announced (and as illustrated by the profile on Netha) - where we want to celebrate the diversity and magic in our community.
Supporting Community Communications Initiatives (Wikipatrika) for Community Building is the initiative just announced by Noopur to support our community's newsletter, Wikipatrika. The attempt is to see how Wikipatrika can become more participative, richer in content and more regular in publication.
Do go through these. Do also add your comments on the respective talk pages.
The constant endeavor of all the work that we do is to help community members who want to take up the various initiatives that we are piloting (with them or with other community members.) Do go through these pilot designs and if you are interested in getting involved, or if you need clarification, or if you want support - please feel free to ask for it on the talk pages or offlist to any of us.
Best
hisham
Hi Folks
Reminder about the IRC later today (9pm IST on March 29th.) Join in using this link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office.
As I had indicated earlier, what we will do going forward is to publish an opening statement - which is below. We'd like to have a rich discussion around these topics for 45 minutes and then throw it open for 15 minutes for any other topics that anyone wants to discuss.
There have been more than 22 outreach sesssions (English + some Indic languages) across India over the past 2 1/2 months. We have been working on constantly every component of outreach.
* Pre-session work - building supporting material (documents, presentations, handouts etc), evaluating different ways of conducting an effective outreach, using different ways to reach out to organisations with the proposal to conduct a session etc.
* Session work - adopting different techniques of doing outreach, how do we get participants more involved during the session, how to filter out the folks so that we do the editing session only with the genuinely interested participants, how to balance between practical and theoretical aspects of training, how much information to give out in one session etc.
* Post-session work - how do we provide editing support to the participants, how do we collect their contact information, how do we keep in touch with them on regular basis, how do we invite them to join other Wiki projects, how do we track their edit count - soon after the session, after 1 and 3 months of conducting the session etc.
We'd like to discuss these. In the IRC, the following will be covered:
* Indic Outreach: How can we do more outreach session in Indic langauges in particular? / Can regional communities work to translate supporting material? / How do we provide more support to different language communities to conduct these sessions?
* More Outreach: If we are doing 7 outreach session in one month right now is there a way of us doing 10 every month? / Can we find more community members who will be willing to conduct these session? / For community members who are interested to conduct outreach sessions but think they lack confidence - is there a way we can help them?
* Better Outreach: Can we find some volunteers who will be willing to "adopt" these newbies and give them support? .
I'd strongly encourage all those folks who have been actively involved in conducting these sessions over the past 2 months to join this IRC. It will be great if you could share your first hand experience with the wider community on what worked, what didn't, what we could have done better etc. I especially do want to ask Indic Wikimedians to join because we desperately need more outreach sessions in Indic languages.
We will also briefly address the early stages of the communications work - which are the storytelling and Wikipatrika support that was announced yesterday. Given it's early days on communications, I'd prefer this IRC stay largely focussed on outreach since there is so much to work through there.
See you all there!
Apologies for sending this note this morning and not last night as I had promised.
hisham
p.s. There is a (tiny) possibility that I might be slightly late but you'll all be in Nitika's safe hands. I shall try and my level best to be on time.
Dear All,
Sorry for sending email for the discussion points so late....
It was a new place called Ranade institute where we had our monthly meet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Pune/Pune19
The mail agenda for meet up was -
*Set up a long-term plan for a year's worth of Wikipuneri activities, with
detailed planning for Wikipedia activities* .
1. Discuss and plan for outreach activities in Pune
2. Communication and reporting of various activities of events
3. Reporting of past events like Marathi Wikisrot launch, Wiki academies
4. Discuss on increase member strength in Pune
5. Discuss immd. project in Pune and the support required
The response was good and many points and ideas came from wikipedians. Here
is the brief summery of the same.
1. Discussed more on the launch of Marathi Wikisource and discussed various
activities to grow it further. Radha madam suggested to have a program with
Madhav Vaze (who played the role of Shyam in the movie "Shyamchi Aai" when
all the books epecially Shyamchi Aai gets uploaded on Marathi Wikisrot.
2. Abhijit Safai suggested some ideas including discussion with MS-CIT
members for increase the contribution in Wikipedia and wikisrot. A meeting
is getting planned.
3. Abhishek suggested to have 2 day residential program on May to increase
the reach of Wikipedia in nearby districts like Nagar, Satara, Nashik,
Kolhapur. We all will support him.
4. Mandar briefed about the activities in Ranade institute including wiki
academy. We need support from more members in this.
5. It was also agreed that we are doing activities in good pace but are bit
lazy in reporting the same in various mailing lists, mail groups and media.
We can make of google groups for the same.
6. All members are requested to get added in the yahoo mailing list.
7. Ashwin also shared some ideas regarding the India English Wikipedia and
Wikipedia loves monuments activity.
Pls. add any more points if I missed anything.
--
Regards,
Mandar V Kulkarni
Email: mandar.kulkarni(a)wikimedia.in
Website: http://mr.wikipedia.org
FYI, a response I got offlist. :)
Ashwin
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 12:21 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] Need Marathi presence in Wikiproject
Medical Translation
To: Rahul Deshmukh <rahuldeshmukh101(a)gmail.com>
Good to know that Marathi Wikipedians are already hard at work. :)
Please add this information to the link I have listed in the post. I
have been adding material to the English version of an important medical
article today.
Ashwin
On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 11:34 PM, Rahul Deshmukh
<rahuldeshmukh101(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Ashwin,
>
> I have already started the medical project working on Marathi WP. The status
> is
>
> 1) Created Project Portal
> 2) Collected members to work on ( including 2 Doctors)
> 3) Around 10 articles are created and under development.
> 4) All related categories, templates are developed.
>
> Can visit at
>
> http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AA%…
>
> Please tell me what can I do next.
>
> Thanks
> Rahul Deshmukh
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:49 PM, Mandar Kulkarni
> <mandar.kulkarni(a)wikimedia.in> wrote:
>>
>> fyi and na pls....
>>
>> Pls. pass on to right people as well who are involved in medical project
>> working on Marathi WP
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:27 PM
>> Subject: [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] Need Marathi presence in Wikiproject Medical
>> Translation
>> To: Marathi Wikimedia <mr-wiki(a)yahoogroups.com>, "Mailing list for
>> Wikimedians in Pune, India" <wikimedia-in-pun(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
>> wikimedia-in-mum <wikimedia-in-mum(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>>
>>
>> Dear friends,
>>
>> We sorely need the presence of Marathi Wikipedia in this vital project.
>>
>> Ashwin
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Nikita Belavate <nsbelavate(a)gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 9:10 PM
>> Subject:
>> To: "ashwin.baindur" <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MED/Translation_project
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Warm regards,
>>
>> Ashwin Baindur
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-IN-PUN mailing list
>> Wikimedia-IN-PUN(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-pun
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>>
>> Mandar V Kulkarni
>> Email: mandar.kulkarni(a)wikimedia.in
>> Website: http://mr.wikipedia.org
>>
>
--
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
--
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Dear friends,
We sorely need the presence of Marathi Wikipedia in this vital project.
Ashwin
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nikita Belavate <nsbelavate(a)gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 9:10 PM
Subject:
To: "ashwin.baindur" <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MED/Translation_project
--
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Hi,
This is a report on Symposium on Wikipedia and also on the launch of
Marathi Wikisource.
Sorry for the delay in sending the report. We were trying to get the
videos and some other URLs from the media. Somehow, the videos are
still not available and there is no point in waiting further. So, here
it is.
On the occasion of "Marathi Bhasha Divas” which was on 27th February,
a symposium on "Wikipedia" was conducted on 25th February. The program
was conducted by jointly by Journalism Department, Ranade Institute,
Pune University, Pune Union of Working Journalists along with Pune
Community of the Wikimedia India Chapter.
Aim of symposium: Wikipedia has emerged as a major source of authentic
information and its versions in different languages (including
Marathi) are also getting popular. Journalism students and journalists
should not remain only consumers of this huge and resourceful
information, but they should also contribute to it as writers and
editors. This symposium aims to acquaint the participants with various
aspects of Marathi Wikipedia and Marathi Wikisrot.
Marathi Wikisource (mr.wikisource.org) was also launched during the
event. Marathi community volunteers were working for launching the
Wikisource website for a long time. Well-known theatre and film
personality "Amol Palekar" was the "Chief Guest" for the program.
The event was organised in the auditorium of Pune Union of Working
Journalists at Patrakar Bhavan, Navi Peth, Pune. About 150 people
attended the same. Participants were mainly students of Journalism
and mass communication departments from various colleges under Pune
University, working journalists, students of some other departments
and a lot of media people and the active Wikipedians from Pune. The
program started at about 2:15 pm and ended at about 5:30 pm.
The program started with the welcome message by Dr. Ujjwala Barve who
is the Head of the department. Initial session on “Introduction to
Wikipedia” was done by Sudhanwa Jogalekar. He gave an overview of
Wikipedia, related projects and also talked about the India Chapter
activities. At the end of his session, there were some interesting
questions about the business model and funding of Wikipedia
activities.
Next session was done by Rahul Deshmukh who gave introduction to
Marathi Wikipedia. Rahul came from Mumbai just for this program!!! He
explained the journey so far and the road map ahead. His session was
also ended with some typical “Puneri” questions like why you do not
give various Government forms on wikipedia?
Futher to this, Mandar Kulkarni gave a talk on Marathi Wikisource. He
explained the concept of Marathi Wikisource in details and the
difference between Wikisource and Wikipedia. He also explained what
content can be added and what not.
This was followed by Launch of “Marathi Wikisrot” website by Amol Palekarji.
After the launch, Amol Palekar shared his thought on Wikipedia and
Wikisource. It was nice to know the views from a celebrity and how
they see the content about themselves on Wikipedia.
He also promised to help in adding the information regarding Marathi
Theature in Marathi Wikipedia and Marathi Wikisource. Marathi
theatre has a long history of about 150 years and this could be some
great project likely to come up soon!!
The last and most. important session was taken care by Mahitgar and he
took the audience through the various editing practices of Marathi
Wikipedia.. He also showed the article of Amol Palekar and tried to
edit the same in front of him. He also informed him that after the
announcement of the this program, many Wikipedians started editing
Amol Palekar’s article in Marathi and English Wikipedia and it has
taken fairly a good shape now.
This symposium has really helped to make the wikipedians come together
and share their views. It also gave a nice trigger for the journalism
students and also the working journalists to work on Wikipedia and
Wikisource.
The event was very well covered by Marathi print and electronic media.
Video coverage by SAAM TV channel was shown on 25th itself and
IBNLokmat channel gave coverage for almost all the day on 26 and also
partially on 27th.
News was published about the event in Daily Sakal, Maharashtra times
and some other papers too.
Here are some URLs for the pictures and media coverage.
Photos available here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Marathi_Wikisrot_Launch
Recording of IBNLokmat channel here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvRjALxKwho
Coverage in Maharatratimes here:
http://maharashtratimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/12037016.cms
Coverage in Sakal here:
http://72.78.249.107/Sakal/26Feb2012/Normal/PuneCity/page3.htm
Coverage in Navashakti newspaper here: http://navshakti.co.in/?p=42780
A followup session was conducted in Ranade Institure on 10th March and
a few more hands on sessions are being planned in the coming weeks.
Overall, this was a very successful and well received event with a lot
of interest generated in journalists and media students. Some new
editors are also in the making from this event.
Warm regards,
-Wikipedians from Pune community
(with Rahul and his IITB team in Mumbai)
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!
web: www.sudhanwa.com blog: www.sudhanwa.in
Twitter: sudhanwa Check on FB, Linkedin for more.
Dear All,
You must be knowing but still worth sharing. This works pretty well for Marathi language....
Only thing, we need to add some words like "विकिपीडिया" in the dictionary.... :)
With Regards,
Mandar V. Kulkarni
http://mr.wikipedia.orghttp://mr.wikisource.orghttp://live.wikimedia.in
----- Forwarded Message -----
>From: Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il>
>To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>Sent: Sunday, 18 March 2012, 1:35
>Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] An easy way to improve the spelling and grammar in the Wikipedia in your language
>
>Hello, Wikipedians in India,
>
>This just struck me: There's a very easy way to contribute to the
>Wikipedia in your language and to your language in general, and a lot
>of people are probably not aware of it.
>
>Here it is: Modern web browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome allow
>you to check the spelling while you type. An important thing that a
>lot of people don't realize is that it works not just in English, but
>in many other languages, too.
>
>If you use Firefox on Windows, go to this page:
>https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/language-tools/
>
>Find the spelling dictionary for your language in the list. Most major
>languages of India already appear there. Some important languages,
>like Kannada and Telugu are not there yet; i'm working on getting them
>there.
>
>To make it work:
>
>1. Click "Install Dictionary" and follow the instructions.
>2. Restart Firefox.
>3. Open some article in the Wikipedia in your language for editing.
>4. Right-click in the editing area.
>5. Make sure that "Check spelling" is checked.
>6. Right-click again. Go to "Languages" and make sure that your
>language is checked.
>
>Now check: Does the spell checking work as you would expect?
>Does it mark incorrect words in red?
>If you right-click words in red, does it offer sensible corrections?
>
>If all works well, you'll be able to easily fix spelling and grammar
>errors in the Wikipedia in your language. It is an easy way to
>contribute to the Wikipedia in your language, because usually you can
>improve the spelling of articles even without knowing much about the
>subject of the article.
>
>It is also possible that the dictionary is buggy or has missing words
>and marks correct words in red. If this happens, please write to me
>and i'll do my best to report these words to the maintainer of the
>dictionary, so that in the next version of the dictionary they will be
>checked correctly. (Let me say this again: Please feel free to write
>to me about technical problems in support for your language. I don't
>know any Indic language well, but i'm sure that i'll be able to help
>nevertheless.)
>
>If you don't use Firefox, you should try it:
>http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html
>(There's a good chance that there's a version in your language!)
>
>If you use Firefox on Linux or Mac, a spelling dictionary for your
>language is supposed to be already installed if you installed a
>language pack for your language in the operating system. If you are
>not sure how to do it or if it doesn't work as you expect, please
>write to me.
>
>Spell checking is supposed to work in Google Chrome, too, but it
>supports less languages and i also found some bugs in its spelling
>functionality. You are still welcome to try it: go to Preferences
>(wrench) -> Under the hood -> Languages and Spell-checker settings,
>and then add your language.
>
>I might be wrong, but i don't think that you can install custom
>spelling dictionaries in Microsoft Internet Explorer. If i'm wrong,
>please correct me; if i'm right, then well, that's another reason to
>try Firefox or Chrome :)
>
>--
>Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
>http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>“We're living in pieces,
>I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>
>
Hi Folks,
One of the essential things that India Program needs to constantly work out is keeping the community informed of the work that we are doing - so that this work is clearer but also to help cross-pollinate ideas amongst a wider set of community members who might not have been engaged on specific village pump / talk page discussion or involved in particular activities (e.g. outreach events) or wikiprojects.
We used to have a monthly IRC with the community and India Program. (For those who are not familiar with IRC, it is an Internet messaging system similar to a regular chat room. It's very simple to use and you can join in by clicking on the following link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office.) I have been remiss in conducting these for the past few months - and I'd like to make amends by restarting, with a couple of modifications.
a) I'd like to propose fortnightly instead of monthly. (I was wary of doing it any more frequently than monthly earlier because I didn't know if there would be enough on the plate to discuss. I have changed my mind now - because there is too much to discuss to cover in a single monthly session.) I'd like to propose that we do it in the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month at 9pm IST (which is GMT + 0530) - THOUGH NOT THIS MONTH - BECAUSE I HAVE MISSED THE TIMELINE. Just for March, we will do it on March 15th and March 29th (both at 9pm IST which is GMT + 0530)
b) I'd like to propose that we do it focussed on specific work streams instead of general. The reason I say this is that - as with many community meet-ups, folks will give time to attend a meet-up or participate in an IRC only if there is a topic of relevance to them. To that extent, we could do one IRC on Indic languages and one on Outreach & Communications. I'd start both the IRCs with a re-cap of India Programs activities for the fortnight (or so) prior to the IRC and forward from the IRC - and then we could talk about either Indic langauges or Outreach & Communications.
The March 15th one will be focussed on Indic Languages and the one on March 29th will be on Outreach & Communications.
Having said that, there is quite a bit of overlap on these topics - so feel free to join both. The more the merrier! Please do also invite anyone who is interested to know more about India Program or - even more importantly - interact with fellow Wikimedians interested in a particular activity to join in. (It's quite a lot of of fun {citation required} - and i've heard a rumour {citation required} that there was actually a romance that started on one of the IRCs...)
As always, the logs will be put up on meta for the benefit of those who can't attend and for the record.
I'll send a reminder on the day of the session and one 30 minutes before the session.
Thanks
hisham